Elor Azarya’s ‘normative’ support for genocide

Last week, Israeli medic-soldier Elor Azarya was given an excessively lenient sentence of 1.5 years in prison for the downgraded charge of ‘manslaughter’ for killing Abdel Fattah Al Sharif in Hebron. When the UN Human Rights Council commented on this being excessively lenient and ‘unacceptable’, Israeli leaders immediately started barking the usual “bias”, “hate”, “detached from reality”, “anti-semitic” and so on and so forth.

As I had noted last week in my coverage of both the verdict and sentence, the military court based its conclusion upon the following:

“After we have examined the collectivity of circumstances, including the substantial contribution of the soldier to the army and to the country as a combat soldier, his positive personality and his being a normative person until his current complication [sic], the extended period in which the defendant had already resided in open detention, the damages caused to the defendant and to his family members due to the whole affair, and the criminal registration accompanying his very conviction, all judges were convinced, that his penalty must be set within the lower end of the range of suitable penalty.”

Let us pay particular attention to the sentence “positive personality and his being a normative person until his current complication”.

Below are two exchanges between Elor Azarya and his family – that is, his parents (Charlie and Oshra), on Facebook, July 2014. The first is from July 15th, with the background of a discussed ceasefire with Hamas in the midst of the 2014 Gaza onslaught. The second is from July 30th:

(July 15th)

Elor: Bibi you transvestite what ceasefire? Penetrate their mother!!!

(23 likes including Adir Azarya, Victor Azarya).

Charlie: All strength we need to penetrate the mother of their mother.

Elor: Yes kill them all.

(July 30th)

Elor: Blessed be their memory.. [ironic reference to a text from Jewish burial ceremony, ed.]

Kahane was right! [Reference to rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the terror group Jewish Defense League and founder of fascist-Jewish Kach party, outlawed from Knesset after 1994 Goldstein massacre in Al-Khalil (Hebron), ed.]

(24 likes including Adir Azarya, Victor Azarya)

Charlie: Kahane the righteous [he died, ed.] was right, may there be a next generation to Kahane.

Oshra: Death to anyone who harms Jews. Enough with being humane, if necessary also women and children should be killed and the first should be ZUBI [‘ZUBI’ is a derogatory name referring to Palestinian-Israeli MK Haneen Zoabi, where ‘zubi’ means ‘dick’ in Arabic, ed.]

So then, this is the “positive personality” and the “normative person” that the military court referred to.

In the Hebrew Local Call last year, John Brown asked “What would happen to an Arab who would be writing on Facebook “kill them all” like Elor Azarya?”, and brought a list of examples of how Palestinians are immediately imprisoned even for the slightest of suggestions of resistance, labeled as ‘incitement to violence’ including Palestinian-Israeli poet Dareen Tatour who wrote the poem “Resist Them”. Brown noted that a month after Azarya’s post (screenshot of exchange in his article),

the Israeli military “decided to draft Azarya and place him, armed, in the midst of a Palestinian population which he was meant to protect. His mother was not arrested for incitement to murder against an Israeli lawmaker, and his father was not only not arrested, but even got a phone call from the Prime Minister”.

So Elor Azarya was perhaps a ‘positive personality’ and a ‘normative person’ within the paradigm and concepts of his genocidal family – but how normal are his and their concepts within the greater societal paradigm?

Immediately after the murder, an Israeli poll aired on Channel 2 noted that 57% of Israelis did not think there was even a need to detain or investigate Azarya, and one out of three supported his action outright. Only 5% defined the act as murder. A few weeks later, a rally in support of Azarya at Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square hosted thousands of Israelis chanting “death to Arabs”, “death to leftists”, with placards saying “kill them all”. Journalists who were assumed to be affiliated with B’tselem (the organization which the cameraman who filmed Azarya worked with) were chased and beaten by mobs, with the police effectively siding with the mob and expelling the journalists.

Although not referring to the murderous rally directly, a couple of weeks later, deputy Chief of Staff General Yair Golan used Holocaust Day to make a comparison to events in Germany culminating in the Holocaust:

“If there’s one thing that scares me about Holocaust memory, it’s identifying revolting trends that took place in Europe in general, and Germany in particular, 70, 80, 90 years ago, and finding evidence of them amongst ourselves, today, in 2016.”

The comparison drew a storm of indignant responses. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Golan “got things completely wrong”. But did he? And did Shaked get it right?

On July 1st 2014, the same period in which the aforementioned genocidal posts of Azarya appeared, Shaked called for genocide against the Palestinian people, on her own Facebook. Excerpts therefrom:

“Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started” [….] Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. Actors in the war are those who incite in mosques, who write the murderous curricula for schools, who give shelter, who provide vehicles, and all those who honor and give them their moral support. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”

Although these words were from a formerly unpublished writing by settler-leader Uri Elitzur (and Shaked regularly hides behind that claim when it is mentioned), she clearly and unequivocally endorsed them at the point with current relevance: “It is as relevant today as it was at the time”, she wrote.

When Azarya was convicted in early January (not yet sentenced), there were calls across the political board for pardoning him – even the left Zionist Union leader MK Shelly Yachmovitch joined the chorus.

One of the people who pushed back against the populist and emotional movement to pardon Azarya was Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot. The popular slogan of the pro-Azarya movement is “Elor is everyone’s child”. Thus Eisenkot said: “An 18-year-old who enlists in the IDF isn’t everyone’s child, he isn’t a baby who was taken prisoner”, he said, and added that “we demand that our soldiers follow the IDF’s set of values: to defend the country with loyalty and love, to treat people with respect, to persevere in the mission. These aren’t just slogans, this is a set of values”.

Eisenkot’s words appear reasonable, but when looking at his military ideology, it betrays the same genocidal approach resembled in Shaked’s mentioned post. Eisenkot is the man who coined the ‘Dahiya Doctrine’. This doctrine is named after the civilian neighborhood of Dahiya in Beirut, where many families of Hizbollah members resided. In 2006, Israel leveled the neighborhood. This collective punishment, blatant disregard for the principle of distinction and deliberately disproportionate violence is a prima facie war crime. Eisenkot not only supervised the actions as chief of Northern Command at the time – he later (2008) even declared it policy for future warfare: “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases…This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.”

In other words, the genocidal aspects are not a fringe element of Israeli society. They are represented by its very political and military leadership.

Genocide as an overall aspect defining the policy of Israel vis-à-vis Palestinians has been noted in various ways by leading historians, intellectuals and writers, recently also by writer Ben Ehrenreich.

The campaign in support of Elor Azarya cannot be seen as disconnected from the overall genocidal vein that he and his actions represent. If cold-blooded murder can only be considered ‘murder’ by 5% of the Israeli public, then that means that Netanyahu’s claim that “Israeli soldiers are not murderers” must be an overarching axiom. The axiom means that they cannot be – because Azarya’s murder was crystal clear, it can’t get clearer than that. If the soldiers CANNOT be murderers, it must therefore be because those whom they murder are not real humans. This is the rather unmistakable dehumanization that is so characteristic to genocidal societies.

The glorification of Azarya has reached unbelievable populistic heights. The supermarket chain Rami Levy recently hosted a campaign featuring “Elor Azarya” shopping bags. The bag has a likeness of Azarya, smiling whilst holding a semi-automatic gun in ready-to-fire position. The text on the bag said “Bag is free. ELOR PAYS FOR US ALL. Happy birthday. Love from the nation of Israel” [which means ‘Jews’ – ed.]. The grocery chain founder Rami Levy claimed to not be aware of the initiative in advance, but nonetheless blessed it in effusive terms: “Every soldier who goes to the army is everyone’s son – for good and for bad, we are talking about a positive initiative from my standpoint, and I have no intention of disturbing it, and surely, surely I do not oppose these bags being distributed free at our chain”, he said.

“Israel’s security demands he be pardoned. Elor was sent to protect Israelis at the height of a wave of Palestinian terror attacks. He cannot go to jail or we will all pay the price.”

Activists in support of Azarya have recently announced a competition, where photos of kids dressed up as the hero-killer will be included in a raffle, towards the Jewish holiday Purim (which includes costumes). The prize is a vacation in holiday suites in Ein Yaakov, northern Israel (courtesy of the owner).

Murderous militaristic costumes have recently appeared in catalogs of Israeli costume outlet Shoshi Zohar, where one costume was a Givati Brigade outfit with a knife covered in blood (model is 4-5 years old boy). (Walla, Hebrew – photo in article).

No doubt, Israeli apologists would seek to portray this campaign and this support as a fringe. But what we must relate to is not merely Azarya as a person, but his act. And when it comes to his act, polls show overwhelming support – 84 per cent – for Azaria among 18- to 24-year-olds, the age of ­Israel’s conscript army, as Jonathan Cook noted, adding that “Azaria is no rogue soldier. He is “everyone’s child”, according to much of the public. The unexceptional nature of his act is vouched for by the complete indifference of his colleagues as Azaria pulled the trigger.”

Azarya’s Military service in Al-Khalil (Hebron) and the murder had in no uncertain ways closed a full circle with his Facebook posts of 2014, idolizing Kahane. As Cook further noted,

“during the trial, it emerged that Azaria, like many of the soldiers serving with him, had befriended former Kach leaders among the settlers in Hebron. Every Sabbath, he and other soldiers, including senior commanders, would visit the home of Baruch Marzel, a former disciple of Kahane, for lunch. A video shows Azaria, after shooting Sharif, walking over to smile with Marzel and shake hands.”

It would appear that the military court which sentenced Azarya was also desperately trying to portray Azarya’s act as an ‘aberration’. In order to do this, it had to point to Azarya’s “positive personality and his being a normative person until the current complication”. This obviously has to ignore Azarya’s clearly stated genocidal inclinations and the genocidal inclinations of his family. It has to regard the murder as a “complication”.

But it’s not that complicated. Israel is today a cesspool of genocidal tendencies. And it’s time to wake up and face the reality and the term: Genocide.

About Jonathan Ofir

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24 Responses

If “death to Arabs”, “death to leftists”, “kill them all” apparently including Journalists who were assumed to be affiliated with B’tselem” (in the hyperventilating rhetoric typical of Facebook-rants, Tweets, and political-rally-slogans) means ‘death to enemies of Israel and its Jewish -ness and business-as-usual-as-of-2017’ — then a lot of people just received a death threat — including quite a few Jews.

Azarya is a hard-core Zionist – the guy who’s happy to do the dirty work while his less-hardy “liberal Zionist” co-collectivists “hold their noses”, wait for the “necessary evil” to be committed and then “primarily celebrate”.

One of the most depressing aspects of this is the way the press these days makes so many elementary mistakes, e.g. Describing Azarya as a “recruit”. He wasn’t; he was a sergeant. They leave out the fact that he’s a medic, not supposed to shoot people, but to tend the wounded. I could cite other aspects, but I’d be here all night.

It’s no longer about “tendencies”. It’s a reality that has gripped israeli society with a hysteria on a par with nazi germany’s and its population; a national psychosis that had brought violent deaths to millions during WW2.
With its nukes and musical chairs played by a coterie of whining whites at the govt’s trough, what the Palestinians have been suffering from for 70+ years threatens the world with unfathomable destruction, while the cowardly world pols remain silent.

It’s too bad that they lack the necessary equipment to tell it like it is while they are IN OFFICE:
Australian ex-PM Kevin Rudd berates Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu
“In a scathing Facebook post, Mr Rudd said the Israeli leader sabotaged US peace talks “by changing the goalposts” often at “five minutes to midnight”.http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-39060353

In other, same-old, news from the 10th Circle of Hell aka israel:
Palestinian woman shot, injured by Israeli forces at Qalandiya checkpoint
…for “carrying a bag in a “suspicious manner.”http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=775691

Mr. Rudd is now, far too late, calling for recognition of the Palestinian state. However, he seems totally imprisoned in the illusion that a 2ss would have emerged long ago were it not for Netanyahu s cunning tricks.

i am really glad to see this article from Ofir (who has steadfastly been producing good work!). He actually puts out some Facebook posts that mirror the kind of genocidal dog whistles I have been pointing out for some time now. I am not even sure it’s “as little” as 57%. My guess – that poll notwithstanding – is that it’s closer to 65-70%.

The thing is that, as i keep saying, American Jews DO NOT read Hebrew, so they see only the tip of the iceberg insofar as the absolute garbage one can see on Israelis’ Facebook pages and other social media. In Hebrew they do not mince words and don’t even try to mask their tracks. In English, it can be shocking too, but it’s easier to dismiss as an “aberration”, especially as there is some push back usually. Ofir no doubt sees what I and many many others see and know to be a fact. Among other things, we have family members that are so far gone that any conversation with them is utterly futile.

And the younger crowd in Israel are the worst of the worst. Basically, if there were arrests for Hate Speech, half of Israel would be in jail – and it’s only half because not everyone sings their ugly tunes in public on the internet. But you sure hear it around the Shabbat tables from the sweetest of all sweet grandmothers and that cute 10 year old kid.

“Kill them all” is so common a refrain, as to be entirely normative.

I just wish people the world over started to honestly digest what that means. Not just for israelis, Jews of the world or palestinians, but for our entire Western civilization. A civilization that continues to tolerate Ghetto Gaza, and will no doubt find ways to avert its collective eyes, when the liquidation starts up in earnest. However cagily and cleverly it is conducted. One can count on that clever little Start-up nation to do things cleverly enough to have a built-in plausible deniability at every step, while the cauldron keeps bubbling, covered with a chalis to contain the noxious fumes.

RE:
· Elor (the murderer): “Bibi you transvestite what ceasefire? Penetrate their mother!!!”
· Charlie (the murderer Elor’s father): “All strength we need to penetrate the mother of their mother.”
· Elor (the murderer): “Yes kill them all.”
· Charlie (the murderer Elor’s father): “Kahane the righteous was right, may there be a next generation to Kahane.”
· Oshra (the murderer Elor’s mother): “Death to anyone who harms Jews. Enough with being humane, if necessary also women and children should be killed . . .” ~ Facebook, July 2014

[EXCERPT] Collective narcissism (or group narcissism) is a type of narcissism where an individual has an inflated self-love of his or her own ingroup, where an “ingroup” is a group in which an individual is personally involved.[1] While the classic definition of narcissism focuses on the individual, collective narcissism asserts that one can have a similar excessively high opinion of a group, and that a group can function as a narcissistic entity.[1] Collective narcissism is related to ethnocentrism; however, ethnocentrism primarily focuses on self-centeredness at an ethnic or cultural level, while collective narcissism is extended to any type of ingroup, beyond just cultures and ethnicities.[1][2] Some theorists believe group-level narcissism to be an extension of individual narcissism, though others believe the two to be independent of each other.

● Development of the concept
In Sigmund Freud’s 1922 study Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, he noted how every little canton looks down upon the others with contempt,[3] as an instance of what would later to be termed Freud’s theory of collective narcissism.[4] Thereafter, Wilhelm Reich and Isaiah Berlin explored what the latter called the rise of modern national narcissism: the self-adoration of peoples.[5] “Group narcissism” is described in a 1973 book entitled The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness by psychologist Erich Fromm.[6]

In the 1990s, Pierre Bourdieu wrote of a sort of collective narcissism affecting intellectual groups, inclining them to turn a complacent gaze on themselves.[7] The term “collective narcissism” was highlighted anew by researchers Agnieszka Golec de Zavala, Aleksandra Cichocka, Roy Eidelson, and Nuwan Jayawickreme in 2009 in their study “Collective Narcissism and its Social Consequences”.[1]

Noting how people’s desire to see their own groups as better than other groups can lead to intergroup bias, Henri Tajfel approached the same phenomena in the seventies and eighties, so as to create social identity theory, which argues that people’s motivation to obtain positive self-esteem from their group memberships is one driving-force behind in-group bias.[8]

● Characteristics
Collective narcissism is characterized by the members of a group holding an inflated view of their ingroup.[1] It is important to note that collective narcissism can be exhibited by an individual on behalf of a group or by a group as a whole.[1] Fundamentally, however, collective narcissism always has some tie to the individuals who make up a narcissistic group.[1] Collectively narcissistic groups require external validation, just as individual narcissists do.[9] Organizations and groups who exhibit this behavior typically try to protect their identities through rewarding group-building behavior (this is positive reinforcement).[9] According to Golec de Zavala and colleagues, collective is an alternative form of narcissism, not altogether connected to individual, where most characteristics of individual narcissism apply, but are manipulated to include the word “group” where “self” might be found. Golec de Zavala et al. state some parallels between individual and collective narcissism . . .

P.P.S. ALSO SEE: “Suspected German Islamist ‘used to be neo-Nazi'” | By Ben Knight | dw.com | February 27, 2017

[EXCERPT] . . . This is not the first time that an individual has switched extremist groups. In 2012, Bernhard Falk, a former member of the leftist “Anti-Imperialist Cell” who converted to Islam while in prison, published a document calling for attacks on the Ramstein US military air base in Germany, after having apparently pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda. Most famously, Horst Mahler, a founding member of the leftist Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorist group, later turned to far-right extremism.

These examples illustrate why Thomas Mücke, head of the Violence Prevention Network, an organization that runs de-radicalization programs in Germany, was not surprised by Sascha L.’s story. “Whatever extremism is concerned, it’s always about marginalizing other people, seeking out a homogenous community opposed to democracy,” he said. “The ideologies of far-right extremism and religious extremism are very similar.”

Thomas Mücke believes far-right and religious extremism share a common ideological structure
“If there is no basic acceptance of human rights, they either stay in their scene or switch to another problematic scene,” he added.

● Psychology or social conditioning
Michaela Glaser, who runs a Halle-based research unit on preventing violent extremism at the German Youth Institute (DJI), thinks a tendency towards extremism is less about psychological patterns and more about social conditions:

“It’s a combination of someone’s experiences out of which certain things become plausible,” she told DW. “Of course that has something to do with the individual and their needs, but ‘psychological patterns’ makes it sound too mechanical. There are certain socialization experiences that people have, that lead to extremist options becoming generally more attractive.”

“There are very different motives as to why people join such groups, but among those motives are definitely compensating for a lack of appreciation, a lack of a sense of belonging, a search for clarity, for knowing where you stand,” she said. “And those are things that those ideologies always cater to. They do it differently, and of course they belong to different social groups. For example, it’s obviously a lot more difficult for someone with an immigrant background to access a far-right extremist group.”

Glaser argues that what all extremist ideologies offer people is a clear distinction between good and evil and a sense that its adherents belong to a special, chosen group – and that a sense of self-worth is imparted through belonging to the group. In other words, whereas far-right extremism works by making distinctions between race, Islamist extremism functions by dividing people between believers and non-believers. But the structure is similar.

[EXCERPT] Dialectic of Enlightenment (German: Dialektik der Aufklärung) is a work of philosophy and social criticism written by Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno and first published in 1944. A revised version appeared in 1947.

One of the core texts of Critical Theory, Dialectic of Enlightenment explores the socio-psychological status quo that had been responsible for what the Frankfurt School considered the failure of the Age of Enlightenment. Together with The Authoritarian Personality (1950; also co-authored by Adorno) and Frankfurt School member Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man (1964), it has had a major effect on 20th century philosophy, sociology, culture, and politics, inspiring especially the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s.[1] . . .

Incitement to Genocide violates the Genocide Convention, too. And that’s one of the reasons why many people say that when Israel kills Palestinans who are either neutralized or innocent its does not because of military neccessity, but with genocidal intent.

This (from mgd) was essentially the remark that got Steven Salaita fired from a leading university, even though he uttered it in a moment where a degree of inflamed feeling was understandable (at least to a decent person) because of the attack on Gaza and even though his phrase ‘awful human being’ (as I remember)!is a moral judgement, not a scream of abuse. Yet there is a complaint going around that universities are hotbeds of anti-Israel feeling. To the extent that this feeling has grown a little – it can hardly be the daily conversation over every cup of coffee – we see how far serious moral judgement rather than vulgar prejudice must be involved. It is clear that anyone who says this kind of thing has to think twice. People motivated by prejudice mixed with self-interest, as prejudice usually is, would think three times and shut up.

Zionism doesn’t recognise Palestinian rights. Never did. Israeli schoolbooks ignore Palestinians. Young Israelis , especially the weaker ones, are not educated. They are indoctrinated in a language nobody else speaks , as fodder for an occupation army. Zionism was a nice idea but in practice has become a nightmare. A liberal vegetarian NY 18 year old Jew has virtually nothing in common with an Israeli 18 year old Jew who studies at a yeshiva.
Israeli Jewish society is out of sync with reality.

Trevor Hogan, Irish rugby player, 2011

“It was very interesting to notice the attitude of the Israelis towards us. They couldn’t comprehend why were doing this. What we were doing challenges their mindset and that is why it is such an effective tactic. They treat the Palestinians as if they are subhuman. They don’t think Palestinians deserve to live in a normal society, to be able to import and export and fish and farm. It’s great to be able to meet that mindset head on.”

Israeli society is not stable. There is a price to pay for decades long dehumanisation of the other. Azarya is a product of his environment. There will be many more like him.

It is worth pointing out that the majority of the Irish population excluding surprise surprise the ” Extreme Loyalist” population of the North of Ireland ( the equivalent in this scenario to the mad Ziofreaks in Zioland itself) support the Palestinians. The Palestinians suffered aggressive colonialism (the Nakba) and continue to suffer from aggressive colonialism. The Irish suffered the same (plantations and the Famine) but they resisted ,fought back and achieved their independence and civil rights. They like the Palestinians were treated as virtually sub human in practice and in law by the English but the “normative” to use the unworthy ” judges” adjective is for ethnosupremist colonies to disappear into the cesspit of history. Such was the fate of English colonialism in Ireland and such will be the fate of Zioland in due course.

Colonialism is above everything about dehumanising the natives in order to dispossess and oppress them. Israel does it to the palestinians but the English were doing it in Ireland in the 12th century.

A hack called Giraldus Cambrensis was a medieval version of the journalists at Arutz Sheva

“This people is, then, a barbarous people, literally barbarous”. (Cambrensis: Topographica Hibernica, 1188)
“Judged according to modern ideas, they are uncultivated, not only in […] dress, but also in their flowing hair and beards”. (ibid)
“All their habits are the habits of barbarians”. (ditto)
“Since conventions are formed from living together in society, and since they are so removed in these distant parts from […] well-behaved and law-abiding people, they know only of the barbarous habits in which they were born”.
“Their natural qualities are excellent. But almost everything acquired is deplorable.” (Still Cambrensis)

Sanders is also some normative guy, he is the hope of the future? what happens when you unpack that rebarbative statement, are Americans unable to understand anything save at level of a powerpoint presentation.

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